Jun

10

1944

Massacre at Oradour sur Glane

The villagers of Oradour sur Glane could have had no idea what was about the take place when men from the 2nd SS Panzer Division travelled up this road on 10th June 1944.

Oradour sur Glane may be notorious but it was by no means the only massacre of French civilians by the Nazis in the summer of 1944. It should also be remembered that 2nd SS-Panzer Division Das Reich were veterans of the Eastern Front. The actions committed on the 10th June were not some sudden aberration by the men involved – one of their officers was to comment that it was “nothing” compared with what went on in the East.

The origins of the massacre lay in the frustration that the SS felt at their slow progress up from the south of France to join the battlefield in Normandy, partly caused by delays as the result of French Resistance sabotage. Michael Williams has put together a detailed study of why Oradour took place

On the 10th of June 1944, a group of soldiers from the Der Führer regiment of the 2nd SS-Panzer Division Das Reich entered and then surrounded the small village of Oradour-sur-Glane, near to the city of Limoges.

At first, they told the Mayor, Jean Desourteaux, that there was to be an identity check and that everyone must go to the Champ de Foire (fairground) whilst this took place. After rounding up all the inhabitants that they could find, the SS then changed their story from that of an identity check, to one of searching for hidden arms and explosives. The soldiers then said that whilst they searched for the arms, the women and children must wait in the church and the men in nearby barns.

The women and children were marched off to the church, the children being encouraged by the soldiers to sing as they went. After they had left, the men were divided into six groups and led off to different barns in the village under armed guard. When the people were all safely shut away the SS began to kill them all.”

A large gas bomb, seemingly made out of smoke-screen grenades and intended to asphyxiate the occupants, was placed in the church, but it did not work properly when it went off and so the SS had to use machine guns and hand grenades to disable and kill the women and children. After they had subdued all the occupants of the church, the soldiers piled wood on the bodies, many of whom were still alive and set it on fire.

This account comes from Michael William’s summary of In a Ruined State a comprehensive online study of the events that day and the reasons for them.

Only one person managed to escape alive from the church and that was Madame Rouffanche, suffering from five separate bullet wounds. This was her account events presented at the trial held in 1953:

Shoved together in the holy place, we became more and more worried as we awaited the end of the preparations being made for us. At about 4 p.m. some soldiers, about 20 years old placed a sort of bulky box in the nave, near the choir, from which strings were lit and the flames passed to the apparatus which suddenly produced a strong explosion with dense, black, suffocating smoke billowing out.

The women and children, half choked and screaming with fright rushed towards the parts of the church where the air was still breathable. The door of the sacristy was then broken in by the violent thrust of one horrified group. I followed in after but gave up and sat on a stair. My daughter came and sat down with me. When the Germans noticed that this room had been broken into they savagely shot down those who had tried to find shelter there. My daughter was killed near me by a bullet fired from outside. I owe my life to the idea I had to shut my eyes and pretend to be dead.

Firing burst out in the church then straw, faggots and chairs were thrown pele-mele onto bodies lying on the stone slabs. I had escaped from the killing and was without injury so I made use of a smoke cloud to slip behind the altar. In this part of the church there are three windows.

I made for the widest one in the middle and with the help of a stool used to light the candles, I tried to reach it. I don’t know how but my strength was multiplied. I heaved myself up to it as best I could and threw myself out of the opening that was offered to me through the already shattered window. I jumped about nine feet down.

When I looked up I saw I had been followed in my climb by a woman holding out her baby to me. She fell down next to me but the Germans, alerted by the cries of the baby, machine-gunned us. The woman and the mite were killed and I too was injured as I made it to a neighboring garden and hid among some rows of peas and waited anxiously for someone to come to help me. That wasn’t until the following day at 5 p.m.

The burnt out shell of the village where 642 men women and children were murdered has been preserved as a memorial.

I was born in Billancourt, Seine, France in 1926 and spent the war years in the department of the Sarthe where the factory my father was working in moved for the duration of he war. I met a GI in 1944, married him, and lived in the states ever since.
My husband died a long time ago but he loved to go to my native land. We stopped one day in Oradour and saw the wall where young men were lined up and shot. I didn’t know that there were many other places to visit. I have been so strongly opposed to any war since WWII that I cringe when I hear of new ones in the making. There are so many repercussions following those terrible conflicts, not just the battles themselves. One of our good American friends was a pilot shot down over Varize in France about the same time as the terrible Oradour massacre. He ended up in the concentration camp of Buchenwald when he insisted on following orders and left the people hiding him to find himself stopped by the Gestapo. He appeard on the documentary filmed by the History channel some years back under the name of “Falling from the sky”. I found most of the people who were hiding him during a trip to my beautiful native country.

This, in a nutshell, is who and what the Germans were. And after they were done they stole what they could according to the French. The fact that Germany was allowed to protect these murderers after the war says everything about the Allies real interest in prosecuting war crimes other than a few show trials, and Germans real level of atonement for their monsterous sins which was minimal.